Tonnerre Lombard

After the success of the first OSS jam, Google invites people to a second round in its new Zurich office on February 28th, 2008. Once again, participants are invited to present their projects in a short 5-minute time frame, trying to find future project contributers.

This time, a topic has been set for submissions: «The desktop in the past, present and future». People who are seeking for participation in their desktop projects are invited to present them at the jam.

OSS Jam and Google

The question is of course how this fits into Google’s search engine business. To this question, there are two different, unrelated answers.

Firstly, Google has extended its scope beyond search engines quite some time ago. Like Yahoo delivered widgets for web applications, Google also delivered the Google Widget Toolkit for Java web applications and similar products, and is expanding its scope to Open Source and the community.

Secondly, Google’s OSS Jam provides the Open Source community with ways to find new participants for their projects, and as such, there is a philosophical relation to the search business.

Either way, it is going to be interesting to watch the future development of this tradition.

For more information please visit Google’s Open Source Jam information site. 

The web service platform provider Google invited to an Open Source Software lecture event called Open Source Jam in Zurich. On that event, participants are invited to present their projects in 5 minutes, trying to find other programmers who are willing to participate in it.

The event is also supposed to feature a “hack center” where participants can code together and socialize. And as the main feature, pizza and beer are provided. The date is not fixed yet though, and participants are invited to subscribe to a common organization mailing list.

The nomenclature debate

It is also to be noted that the event has been announced as an Open Source Event, which has already caused Free Software propagators to abstain from participation in an event. It is clear that the event is unluckily announced already, and it is going to be interesting how it is going to be accepted in the Free Software camp.